Officials said the telecom authority has submitted its nomination recently for the category of Outstanding Achievement Awards including Best GSMA Chairman’s Award and Government Leadership Award

PTA top-brass leadership seems confident to win the contest since it has won two titles recently PTA and its chief were awarded the titles of Best Most Progressive Telecom Regulator in South Asia for the year and Best Telecom Regulatory Leader of the Year by South Asian, Middle Eastern and North African (SAMENA) Telecommunication Council.

Telenor Pakistan with its product Easypaisa has entered the race of the Global Mobile Awards 2011 for the first time to record a landmark milestone achievement in its history.

The Norwegian cellular operator seems confident in contesting for two following categories-Social and Economic Development and Best Mobile Business and Enterprises. Telenor Pakistan has won Mobile Money Transfer Award in November 2010 for its mobile-banking services ‘Easypaisa’.

The Easypaisa services transacted Rs 10 billion in a single year with the total transaction carried recorded six million mark till October 2010. Starting with 2,200 outlets at the launch, service has been extended to more than 11,000 outlets in 700 urban and rural areas across Pakistan. The spread is even greater than the number of bank branches in Pakistan, which are more than 8,000.

(Source: DailyTimes)

Alienware® specializes in high performance gaming machines featuring 12-way multitasking processing. Dell Pakistan introduced the M15x and M17x laptops to the Pakistani bloggers and gamers with the new Intel® Core i7 mobile processors.

The event was attended by Shahzad Aslam Khan, Country Manager Dell Pakistan and Afghanistan and Naveed Siraj, Country Manager Intel Pakistan. He said:

“Dell Pakistan constantly strives to provide its loyal customers with the best; therefore we are proud to unveil Alienware®. For a growing market, well versed in the high-tech, Alienware® is going to be a breath of fresh air. These machines will take over the local gaming PC market through sheer competence”.

Naveed Siraj added,

“With this initiative, Intel Pakistan hopes to welcome the New Year with a fixed purpose to introduce more cutting-edge products for our customers. Alienware® featuring the new Intel® Core™ i7 mobile processors will take you even further with features like Intel’s Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost technologies that power through games, multimedia applications and your daily routine all at the same time. The devices, with the help of Intel® Core processors, deliver the ultimate high-definition gaming and entertainment experience. We will continue to engage, interact and support Pakistan’s blogging/online community and help them get the experience they are looking for.”

The bloggers interacted with the newly introduced machines, which were, much to their awe, loaded to the brim with the latest technology in gaming due to their superior graphics, the latest in processor technology and Hi-def capabilities. The gaming machines also feature Alienware® QuickTouch system control pad which uses touch-capacitive sensors to access and manage power, volume controls and wireless connectivity, rendering mechanical buttons and control knobs obsolete. According to the consumer’s choice the Alienware Laptops may be fitted with either one of Intel® Core™ i7 or i5 processors.

The event itself was a sight to behold, with Alienware branding and Aliens interacting with the attendees. The stars of the night might have been Alienware laptops but the Aliens present at the event were surely not far behind, adding their quota of mystery to the event.

Speakers at the event discussed the new initiatives and best practices from Oracle Applications that could enable participants to take advantage of Oracle’s expanded product portfolio for their specific needs.

“Economic and competitive pressures are challenging organizations to improve business performance, introduce new products to market more quickly and optimize distribution management. To address these challenges, we selected Oracle for its world-class leading technologies which will help us to integrate our decentralized IT infrastructure,” said Salman Rehmatullah, Chief Information Officer, Pak Elektron Limited.

Oracle’s extensive business applications portfolio provides Oracle a leadership position in business applications across many industries including financial services, manufacturing, distribution, retail and telecommunications.

“Our selection of Oracle Applications was based on a thorough evaluation of ERP solutions available in the market. We have found Oracle to be a natural choice in the areas of planning and manufacturing for our organization,” said Qasim Imran, Manager, Information Technology, Atlas Battery Limited. “The Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 will give us a holistic view of information across all our business functions, and enable us to have real-time access to critical data through a reliable and highly available platform, helping us to develop strong relations with the businesses and individuals we serve.”

The powerful combination of complete solutions and complete choice drive better business performance and help customers tailor their enterprise business and IT strategy, optimize their IT investments and use IT as a strategic point of differentiation.

Ahsen Javed, Managing Director, Oracle Pakistan and South Asia Growth Economies – West said, “Our customers’ feedback after deploying our best-in-class offerings is a great motivation for us to strengthen our product portfolio and Oracle Applications Day provide us an excellent opportunity to know about the experience of customers with our products.”

“We are pleased to know that our purpose-built industry solutions have enabled organizations in Pakistan to strengthen their overall competitive position by driving greater value across the enterprise,” he added.

Attendees appreciated efforts of Warid Telecom for organizing series of Atif concerts for the entertainment hungry Pakistani youth at a time when nothing is happening around due to security concerns. Glow and Atif, will be heading to Karachi next week for another exciting concert.

The MoU would also boost mutual cooperation in the relevant fields and would enhance the industry academia linkage. The MoU would be valid for (five) 5 years and would be renewed on completion.

Main objectives of this collaboration are to support research activities and to equip future leadership with theoretical and practical training in policy and regulatory issues of telecom sector. It is expected that the related organisations would benefit from this collaboration, as young experts would be conducting research in the relevant fields of telecom with guidance of the faculty and PTA.

On this occasion, Chairman PTA Dr Mohammed Yaseen said that PTA would provide data on telecom sector and expertise to UET Taxila, reciprocally the University would encourage its students to undertake research in different areas of telecom sector. He said that under the MoU, PTA would help UET in identification of research areas.

Similarly, UET would cooperate with PTA on different issues of trade, business and economy related to telecom sector. The VC said “we are looking for possibility to set up a Chair on Telecommunications at UET.

“We have also plans to start masters and doctorate programmes in telecom regulations. We want to establish an institution for telecom research as well,” he added.

This is the third MoU signed between PTA and any university. Similar understanding exists with COMSATS and NUST. PTA has been working continuously towards encouragement of research activities in telecom sector. Being an academia friendly organization it has taken initiatives to establish strong linkages with educational institutions for the promotion of telecom research. Research on regulatory issues, challenges and transfer of new technologies in local sector is likely to help the regulator and the policy makers.

To this end PTA has taken significant steps that have received a positive response from all the stakeholders. These initiatives include PTA Gold Medal Scheme, Essay Competition on World Telecom Day and cash prizes for best research project competition and SMS-based Information System for educational institutions.

The classy touchscreen BlackBerry Storm 9500 smartphone is now available for only Rs. 22,999 with the following value additions, FREE for 6 months!

150 minutes per month

• Zero line rent
• Unlimited BlackBerry Internet Services
• Unlimited GPRS / Internet Services
• Unlimited SMS every month

This is not all, the sleek and stylish BlackBerry Pearl (8100 or 8120) smartphone is available for Rs. 19,999 only, with the following value additions FREE for 1 whole year!

• 200 minutes / month
• Zero line rent
• Unlimited BlackBerry Internet Services
• Unlimited GPRS / Internet Services
• Unlimited SMS every month

For more information about Mobilink indigo value bundle, visit www.mobilinkworld.com/valuebundle

Popular bloggers from all over Pakistan expressed their enthusiasm during the Meet-up. The Samsung Bloggers Meet-up provided a deeper insight about the capabilities and advantages of the Tab, which provides a world of new possibilities for the Bloggers and individuals on the go. In Pakistan, the Mobilink Indigo brand fully enables this versatile innovation and on purchase of the Samsung Galaxy Tab; Mobilink will provide free GPRS for 3 months over their network as well as a complimentary leather book cover.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab uses the Google operating system Android 2.2 (Froyo). It features a 7-inch (180 mm) TFT-LCD touch-screen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, a GPS chip, a 1.0 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 (“Hummingbird”) processor, and a Swype input system. This revolutionary product is also equipped with a 3.2 megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash.

It has a 3.5mm ear jack and speakers that can support a wide range of audio formats like MP3, AAC, WMA, AMR-NB/WB and many more. Its standard battery has the capacity to play up to 7 hours of video and more than 10 hours of talk time. The Samsung Galaxy Tab also supports Adobe Flash 10.1 offering varying multimedia content accessibility to the user, DivX, MPEG-4, WMV and Xvid (H.263, H.264). It also features e-reading applications like Press Display (an online newspaper kiosk), Kobo (e-book reader) and Zinio an e-magazines store.

Upon confirmation, the place was raided with FIA and a live huge set up of illegal call termination has been confiscated. Further investigations are underway by FIA. It is one of the biggest set ups unearthed so far having around hundred operational tellulars and thousands SIMs being used in the grey activity.

It may be added that PTA has established highly advance technical monitoring system to identify such illegal activities throughout Pakistan. After identification of the illegal activity; PTA not only unearths the exact location of these networks but also launches crack down with the help of FIA to safeguard national interests.

Chairman PTA, Dr. Mohammed Yaseen appreciated the joint efforts of PTA and FIA teams and also warned all those involved in the illegal telecom business to stop their activities, otherwise PTA shall take strict action against them as per the law.

(via: PakObserver)

According to the initial draft, it would be mandatory for all cellular companies to submit QoS compliance report to authority.

It would be necessary for all cellular companies to meet minimum Quality of Service KPIs and benchmarks.

Key Indicators for QoS Standards:

• Network down-time for cellular companies should not exceed 1 percent mark, which is relatively high as compared to global standards.

• Grade of service or (the probability that the end customer can access the mobile services when requested while it is offered by display of the network indicator on the mobile Equipment), in any case should be 98 percent or higher.

• Call Connection Time: Should be less than or equal to 5 seconds

• Call Completion Ratio: Should be higher than 98 percent

• Voice Quality: Under PESQ Algorithm (ITU-T P .862) mean opinion score should be greater than 3.

• Accessibility of SMS Service: Greater than 99 percent

• SMS Delivery Time: Less than 8 seconds

Cellular companies would calculate their indicators and will have to report them to authority on monthly basis.

In response, authority will measure the quality of service through data submitted by the companies or surprise drive tests.

Regulation will be in place after industry’s consultation. Last date for submission of input on draft is set as January 7th, 2010.

(Source: ProPakistani)

“Samsung Grammar School” for girls, has been built and furnished with generous funds provided by Samsung. It will be operated by the SOS RSP to provide a high standard of education to the region. The opening ceremony was a colourful event, graced by In Jae Lee, who shared the joy of creating this educational opportunity for the rural population. Students gave an interesting performance and a large number of media representatives were also present.

Samsung Pakistan’s Managing Director, Mr. Heeh Chang Yee said,

“Samsung has an elaborate Social-development and CSR commitment, whereby, we are making efforts to foster modern education in underdeveloped regions. We support well established welfare organizations like “SOS Villages” to provide quality education, thus accelerating the social, educational and financial progress of the whole region”.

Rabiya Siddiqui, PR Manager Samsung said;

“It is a pleasure to see that a great brand of electronics – Samsung is playing a big role in developing schools in the rural areas. The talented students of Kasur region will now study in a modern environment and be ready to face the challenges of life. The Samsung Grammar high School is ready to serve the students living in many villages around this area. Free education will be provided to the deserving students.”

Surrounding villages that will benefit from this institution include: Rohewala, Lohgarh Jhugian, Ladheke, Sheikh Pura Nauand Basti Ladheke, UC Sehjra Tehsil and District Kasur. Over 13,500 people in these rural communities do not have any premium quality educational institutions. The nearest Government Girls High School was 4.5 Kilometres away so the girls faced problems in reaching there, but now Samsung School has solved this problem.

Other recreational, cultural and training opportunities will also be provided by experienced and qualified teachers. The school structure comprises of class rooms, library, science labs, computer labs, sports and transportation facilities etc. SOS will also establish a community health centre in collaboration with SAMSUNG in the school building to fulfill the basic needs of the poor community.

With this new development, Pakistanis living abroad can easily top-up Zong prepaid subscribers back home via TransferTo’s international airtime transfer network, which is comprised of mobile operators, point of sale retailers, and its online top-up service, www.transferto.com.

Eric Barbier, TransferTo Founder and CEO said:

“We’re thrilled to welcome Zong on our network, which now enables top-ups to all prepaid mobile subscribers in Pakistan.”  He added: “Pakistanis living abroad now have many ways to send low cost, high value gifts to their loved ones back home as a complement to their cash remittances.”

According to the World Bank, approximately 200 million migrants send more than $400 billion back home each year. For many of those migrants, making the gift of airtime is an inexpensive way to complement their regular cash remittances. International top-ups are also a great way to reach out to loved ones on special occasions such as birthdays or religious holidays. International Top-ups are a growing trend: today, millions of migrants worldwide send International Top-Ups back home several times a month.

Expressing his views Salman Wassay, Head of Marketing at Zong said:

“Our vision is to offer innovative products. With such value propositions we will be able to establish a strong connection with the Pakistani consumers and their families worldwide besides boosting our presence throughout Pakistani communities.”

About TransferTo

TransferTo operates a global mobile airtime network enabling small value transfers through mobile phones. With this solution, migrants can send mobile credit from their mobile phone or through retailers, banks or money transfer companies, to their friends and relatives back home. With more than 100 migration corridors fully covered over 5 continents, TransferTo is a leader in the international airtime remittance space.

Warid introduces Group SMS Service, now Warid users can create their SMS group of up to 10 of their friends. Every message they send to the group will be sent to each person in the group, and when they respond, the replies will be sent to everyone in the group as well. This makes group discussions and planning get-togethers and other group activities easy and spontaneous with just a couple of SMS’s.

Customers can add off-net numbers to their groups as well.

Getting Started:

• Create your group by sending ‘Create <space> <GroupName>’ to 9393.

• You will be asked to set up your profile through SMS including your nickname. This will only need to be done for the first time you use Warid Group SMS.

• Start sending invitations to your friends to join the group by sending ‘INVITE<space> GROUPNAME<space> <MobileNumber>.

• If you have created a group, you will be allocated a number through which you can initiate messages to your group members by simply sending an SMS to the allocated number.

• In case that you have been added in to a group, you will be asked to save the number from which you received the confirmatory SMS on being added to the group. Now whenever you want to send an SMS to all your friends in your group, just send the SMS to the number you saved! For example: ‘hey how’s it going?’ in an SMS to your saved number.

• For help at any time, just send HELP<space>GROUPS to 9393.

Available list Of commands (to be sent in an SMS to 9393):

• CREATE <Group Name> – To Create a Group

• INVITE <Mobile Number> – To invite other users to your group

• JOIN <Group Name> – To Join a group

• M <Group Name> <Message> – An alternative way of sending a message to the group

• RENAME <new Username> – To change your nick

• MUTE <groupname/user> – To mute a particular group or user

• LIST <groupname> – To list all members of a group

• DELETE <groupname> – To delete a group

• LEAVE <groupname> – To leave a group

• HELP GROUPS – For help on using the service

Charges:

• Rs. 1+tax/SMS for both prepaid and postpaid subscribers

The Managing Director of Samsung Pakistan, Mr. Steve Han said; “It is really painful to see such a large number of Pakistanis, facing such a massive disaster, where they have lost their homes, livelihood, properties, valuables and lives. Samsung is fully committed to help in the revival of a normal healthy life for these fellow citizens.”

During this visit the Samsung team personally ensured the fair distribution of 2 truck loads of relief goods. The DCO of Muzaffargarh briefed them about the extent of devastation in the area. About 2.1 million people among the total population of 3.5 million living in and around Muzaffargarh have been affected by the floods. 50% of the road Infrastructure, 80% of schools and 90% of health centers in the district are either destroyed or severely damaged.

This team from Samsung, which also included Mr. Zeshan Qureshi- Head of Mobile Phones, Ms. Rabiya Siddiqui-PR Manager and Mr. Zahid Saeed- Head of HR and Admin later visited some surrounding areas like Baseera and Shershah, where the level of devastation has been more than 75%. The recent floods have caused a severe disaster for people all over Pakistan.

Earlier, Samsung has been regularly distributing flood relief packs, each containing essential items like; Cooking Oil 2.5 kg, Flour 10 kg, Sugar 3 kg, Rice 5 kg, Gram 1 kg, Pulses 1 kg, Tea 0.5 kg, Sherbet Bottle 1.5 liter, Clothing for Man/ Woman and 1 Pack of Dry Milk.

Mobilink Jazz prepaid users can now have their credit balance topped-up through the international airtime transfer network of TransferTo which is comprised of mobile operators, point of sale retailers, and its online top-up service www.transferto.com.

Bilal Munir Sheikh, Vice President Marketing Mobilink, said,

“Jazz, Pakistan’s favorite prepaid cellular brand is presently offering the largest portfolio of value added services to its valued customers. With the addition of this international top-up service, we are pleased to expand our services and reach across the borders for ease and convenience of the Mobilink family.”

Eric Barbier, TransferTo Founder and CEO said,

“We’re extremely pleased to be collaborating with Mobilink to offer our customers a larger choice of Pakistan airtime top-up options. The service will greatly benefit Pakistanis abroad who want to send low cost, high value gifts to their loved ones back home as a complement to their cash remittances.”

Jazz international top-up with TransferTo is currently available in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Pakistani subscribers in Saudi Arabia can send Jazz top-ups simply through SMS if they are subscribers of a partner operator, STC.

All Jazz international top-up transactions will be processed in real-time through the secure platform of TransferTo. Mobilink Jazz international load facility is already available in UK, USA, Spain, UAE in collaboration with ezetop.

Jazz Non Stop Call Masti offer will replace existing Jazz Ghanta offer on Jazz Octane package from September 15th, 2010.

Terms & Conditions:

• For first two minutes, On-net calls will be charged at Rs 1 per 30 seconds and FnF Calls at Rs 0.45 per 30 seconds
• With this offer customer can call 3 On-net FnF number at the hourly call rate of Rs 1.80/Hrs any time of the day.
• Off-net calls will be charged as per regular Jazz Octane tariff
• Package daily fee of Rs 1 will be applicable to all Jazz Octane subscribers in addition to the daily subscription fee of Jazz Non Stop Call Masti offer
• For Jazz Octane LNO subscribers On-net calls will be charged at Rs 4 for first minute between 12am-7am
• 19.5% tax apply on the above mentioned price